Combating Corruption: Investigative Journalists on the Frontlines

Abstract

Around the world, journalists uncover corruption, abuse of power, and financial misdealing – often at the risk of serious consequences or under financial constraints. These are also important issues in economic research. Economists address similar problems from a different perspective, and offer logical explanations for the factors that enable a risk of corruption, its harmful impact on society, and why governments fail to enforce their anti-corruption laws. Below we discuss some of the problems of corruption and how investigative journalism contributes to controlling it. We are interested in what the disciplines of journalism and economics can learn from each other. The more authoritarian leaders weaken integrity standards in governance, the more financial secrecy providers facilitate grand scale crime; and the more barriers there are for journalists who seek to disclose misdealing, the more important it is to join forces across countries and across disciplines.